3MF

Cinderella

Civic's holiday musical Cinderella is in full swing so I went down to check it out. Seeing it made me so glad i was not working it. It looks like a technical nightmare. In fact, it was fun seeing things go wrong (the magic of live theatre). May favorite flub was watching as Cinderella was traveling across the stage in her horse drawn carriage when the horses broke loose and left her center stage. Luckily that was the end of act one so the curtain could just come down. While the show’s songs are not remarkable, and there’s not a whole lot you can do with plot and character development with a fairy tale, i still had a good time, mostly because it felt good to be there again.

Runaway Jury

I just got back from seeing Runaway Jury. I really knew nothing about the film going into it, and came away rather pleased. It has a lot of fun twists to it. It even features several cameos by some of my favorite electronic devices including an iMac, an iPod, and my very own digital camera. Maybe i was just sitting too close, but i might have enjoyed it even more had i not been distracted by John Cusack's eyeliner.

Getting the face just right

I just wrapped up a project at work. We had to whip out a web application to accept customer business plans. The last part was some client side javascript to validate user input before submitting it. Most of the fields on the form expect numbers, dollar amounts, or percents. I wanted to validate each number after it was typed to makes sure it had the right number of decimal places and had no extra characters ($,%,etc). Because this was a luxury (the form processing would clear out any bad values as well) i decided to target only browsers that support at least support .getElementById() (gEBI browers). With that in mind, how hard can it be to dynamically set the "onblur" event after the page loads? It turns out events are something that still have crazy difference among applications. I was going nuts till a found a tutorial on the DOM event model. I spent a lot of time working on that little feature. Why? That's hard to explain.

You remember that guy in Amile who painted that painting over and over again because he couldn't get the look of the girl in the middle just right. He could draw eyes, a mouth and a nose and when you put it all together you get a face but it just somehow wasn't right; it wasn't great. Sometime i feel like an artist at my keyboard. I try things out on my pallet and i go over parts of the code over and over again to make them better; to make them more beautiful. However, it seems like there is always more work to do.

My code will never appear in a gallery; in fact few other people will ever see it or even care how i do something. Perhaps I think my code is my legacy or that it somehow reflects how i am. That’s sad isn’t it. I need a new hobby.

I love infographics

I came across this wonderful page showing the results of the California elections. The author goes through the steps of transforming a graphic showing results by country as it appears in the official elections results, into a truly informative graphic masterpiece.

This is the second time this week i came across this site. The other story was about the speed of animals in flight. I think these articles are beautifully designed; i'm inspired by the layout and illustration.

Hey, that's me

One of the features of the camera that i got is that you can flip the lens around and take a picture of yourself. Each time i've shown someone how to do this, the first picture generally turns out to be quite interesting. Here's Megan and Ann as well as my little cousin Breanna.

Crane-san

I went to see one of my former improv buddies, Lara, at her school show. It was called...i don't know, something Japanese. It was some ancient legend of a painter that falls in love with a princess but has kids with a bird. It was presented very well and looked great. I guess i'm just not used to Japanese fairy tales and they seems a bit odd to me; if it doesn’t have a wicked witch or a big bad wolf, it just doesn’t feel right. Buy anyway the cast made 1500 or so paper cranes so every audience member got to take one home.

Back to school

I took a break from school after i got my associates degreee from GRCC; but now i feel i'm ready for more. Recently i applied to GVSU to begin the next wave and recieved my letter of acceptence this week. They sent me a report evaluating my accademic track record to see where i stand. Apparently, to get a degree i will have to choose from one of twenty-threee "themes" to fullfill the liberal arts requirements. Options include "making war and peace," "the human journey," "death and dying" and "the new third world." This maybe a lot more lame than i ever imagined. Is it really worth it?

The Sleeves

I saw The Sleeves perform tonight at Schulers on Alpine. They always put on a good show. If you're not familiar with their sound, they've posted some MP3's online. I recommend Missy's Got Her Hot Pants On [2.3 mb] and Amelia [4.9mb] - and you thought there weren't enough good songs about famous female pilots.

A lesson in adapting

Last night i went to see "A Lesson Before Dying" put on by Actors' Theatre. It's the story of a young black man sentenced to death for a murder he did not commit in 1948 Louisiana. In the course of his trial, his lawyer calls him a hog so after he's put in jail, he chooses to act like a hog until he's to be dragged to the electric chair. This young man's godmother convinces a local teacher to visit this prisoner and teach him how to die like a man rather than an animal. It's ultimately an exploration of racism in its many forms.

This show was originally supposed to open Thursday night, but hours before curtain up, the lead actor was sentenced to jail. They had no choice but to cancel the show. On Friday they found Michael Travis to fill in; so with a few hours practice he performed that night. Obviously there is no way to learn lines that quickly so he had to carry the script around. What Michael did must have been terrifying. Typically the weeks spent in rehearsal aren’t just about memorization, but about working together with fellow actors, finding "moments," and setting a pace. Saturday's performance didn't have the feel of a well-polished production, nevertheless, Michael did a great job making it seem as natural as possible.

Quo Vadimus

I just got through watching the complete season of Sports Night on DVD. If you never saw it, this was a great "dramady" written by Aaron Sorkin (the West Wing guy) about the behind the scenes craziness of a nightly sports news television program. ABC carried the show for two seasons from 1998-2000. It was wonderfully witty show with very smart writing. I enjoyed watching how the program grew over time: how characters changed, new sets emerged, and the laugh track dissappeared.

This show holds a special place in my heart thanks to one character. The office nerd is named Jeremy. In may ways he's the typical geek archetype found on many other programs. He is an information repository, has a degree in applied mathematics, writes computer programs, and wears glasses. Your typical geek love-interest plot involves the nerd helping a beautiful girl with her homework; the beautiful girl spends enough time with him to see his inner beauty; the geek takes off his glasses and suddenly he is handsome and they fall in love. Jeremy's story is nothing like that. In his case the beautiful girl (in his series her name it Natalie) falls in love with him from the start - as soon as he does his first geeky thing. He feels no need to hide his intelligence nor compromise any part of who he is. And the best part? He gets to keep his glasses on.

If we dont keep our glasses on, how will we know where we are going?

Changing pens

I decided to switch my blog over from Blogger to Moveable Type. It just sounded like the geeky thing to do. I've havn't played around with it too much yet but this is what i have so far. I'll probably try to customize the layout a bit more in the coming weeks to make it feel more like home.

You may also notice that i may be posting more pictures. I got a digital camera not too long ago (with helpful advice from Kevin) and i've been taking it with me more places. We'll see if anything good comes from it.

Thirty five years

This month marks my father's thirty fifth year of service for our goverment. Most of that time was spent working for the United States Post Office (the other time was spent in the military). Apparently after that many years you get a metal bird.

Car wash man

I went though the car wash today for what will probably be the last time of the warm season. I remember being fascinated and terrified by the car wash as a child. I had my camera with me so i thought i would try to capture a few shots. I accidently caught this guy walking by.

Playing with string

Not too long ago i managed to catch Nova's presentation of The Elegant Universe on television. It provided a good overview of string theory. Today i came across an interesting interview with Brian Green, that show's host. I wish i could understand all that stuff someday and would be able to toss terms like "noncommutative geometry", "loop-quantum-gravity", and "Calabi-Yau shape" into the course of everyday conversation.